The Shorter Story
by Touch of Gray
Summary: She's like a fast river, lively and rushing and completely unstoppable. [50 themes, one sentence each. Irvine and Selphie.]


_the_ **shorter** _story_

#01 - Air

She's always preferred Trabia to Balamb; the clearer air around the snowcaps, uncluttered by sea salt or fish or ships or _his_ infuriatingly omnipresent scent, which she can't place but can't seem to get rid of - it follows her around like a sick puppy, even when he doesn't.

#02 - Apples

She tastes like apples and cinnamon and something else he can't name.

#03 - Beginning

He almost dropped his gun when he turned around and realized who he was looking at - were they really the same people, or were his eyes just playing tricks on him?

#04 - Bugs

Once, in the Deep Sea Research Center, some insect crawled into Selphie's boot - the situation ended when Squall yelled at her to just take off the damn shoe and get rid of it, after she'd already shrieked herself hoarse and nearly choked Quistis in terror (Irvine and Zell both still tease her about it).

#05 - Coffee

He drinks his coffee black, which she thinks has to be the most disgusting thing _ever_; she fills the cup to half-full with sugar and cream before even considering pouring the coffee, which he figures completely ruins the effect of drinking it.

#06 - Dark

He wakes up in the middle of the night and she's right there, curled up next to him, shivering - he had forgotten that she had that phobia of being alone in the dark.

#07 - Despair

"We're never gonna get out of here," Irvine mutters, digging his foot into the tangle of wires leading deeper under the ocean.

#08 - Doors

She panics because she just _knows_ they're trapped, and they're gonna die here, so far under the waves, somewhere they're not supposed to be, and nobody's ever gonna find them; then Irvine finds the mechanism that opens the door and she nearly cries in relief.

#09 - Drink

She glares at him when he kisses her, but is far too drunk to care.

#10 - Duty

He grins as he leans closer - "Since when do you ever do exactly what you're told?"

#11 - Earth

Leaning against a window, high up in space, watching the world turn without her far below, she's never felt so alone.

#12 - End

"This is it," she says, "this is the ending," and doesn't want a reply.

#13 - Fall

Her knuckles are white, clutched around the harness of the escape pod, and she thinks she might be screaming (she also thinks it might be his name).

#14 - Fire

There's something unspeakably frightening about her, and it has less to do with her than with the way he reacts to her - she's so passionate and _alive_ and he knows (and doesn't want to know because it hurts so much) that people like her can never live very long.

#15 - Flexible

He starts to make a crack about how useful her old dance training is in certain places, but she hastily clamps a hand over his mouth (Rinoa sniggers uncontrollably for the rest of the day and absolutely refuses to let her live it down).

#16 - Flying

She's amazed at how easily the Ragnarok moves under her fingers, and suddenly has to restrain the urge to just take off into the blue and never, ever look back (it would be so _easy_).

#17 - Food

She eats like a horse when she eats at all and he doesn't think it's very healthy.

#18 - Foot

When she slams the door, he stands still, face smarting where she slapped him only seconds before, and then realizes that everyone around is staring at him - this is foot-in-mouth syndrome at its _worst_.

#19 - Grave

She doesn't know he's watching her when she kneels in the wreckage of Trabia and cries.

#20 - Green

He's never seen anything quite like her eyes - her hair, other people have worn, and her dress was picked off a shelf, but no one can imitate the way her eyes sparkle when she turns around and laughs.

#21 - Head

She hates being so much shorter than him (because he keeps looking down her shirt).

#22 - Hollow

When Ultimecia is defeated, all of a sudden he doesn't have an excuse to stay around and she doesn't have an excuse to keep him.

#23 - Honor

She wonders if he even knows what fidelity means sometimes.

#24 - Hope

"We're going to make it out of here," Squall says, and she doesn't believe him; "It'll take more than a crazy sorceress to get rid of _me_," Irvine says, and she feels oddly better.

#25 - Light

Dawn breaks red on the morning they face Ultimecia and she doesn't think she's ever wished harder to hold onto night.

#26 - Lost

Trapped somewhere in between the beginning of the world and the end of it, he thinks he's going to die.

#27 - Metal

She keeps flowers in her dorm and says it's because all these steel walls and pretty iron-wrought bedposts can't be entirely healthy.

#28 - New

There's no place for a baby in a Garden full of mercenaries and she wishes it was a problem she had.

#29 - Old

She goes back to Trabia every year, just so she won't forget.

#30 - Peace

None of them quite know what to do with themselves after the unimaginatively-named Second Sorceress War.

#31 - Poison

She's intoxicating and addictive and so damn _good _it almost hurts.

#32 - Pretty

He tells her every day how gorgeous she is and he doesn't think she's ever believed a word of it.

#33 - Rain

Even though it's pouring, he knows it isn't rain on her face - he just wish he knew why it couldn't be.

#34 - Regret

"I'm sorry," she whispers, and won't tell him what for.

#35 - Roses

She tells him lilies are much, much prettier than any other flower and he takes mental notes.

#36 - Secret

She has a picture of him in drag and doesn't remember where it came from, but it always makes her smile (he has no knowledge of this picture, which is really a good thing, because he'd burn it - Irvine made an incredibly hideous woman).

#37 - Snakes

He completely freaks out when he walks into their dorm and finds a snake in a dry, brightly-lit aquarium on her desk, and wonders why he can't have a normal girlfriend who likes puppies or kittens.

#38 - Snow

He has absolutely no idea how she survived in Trabia (_Trabia_, as in, _ice_) wearing the dresses she does.

#39 - Solid

"Ouch," she mutters, rubbing her head where she crashed into him, "get fat or something, will you?"

#40 - Spring

She smells of cherry blossoms and vanilla, even in winter.

#41 - Stable

Nothing is ever really consistent in their relationship - sometimes they're friends, other times lovers, and then sometimes enemies - and he doesn't think he could handle a lifetime-kinda-relationship if it was more stable.

#42 - Strange

He eats peanut-butter-and-pickles sandwiches and then _wonders_ why she won't kiss him until several hours after lunch.

#43 - Summer

She spends half the summer cooped up inside complaining of the heat, until he throws her off Balamb's dock.

#44 - Taboo

"What if we hadn't been able to get back after fighting Ulti - " she begins, but stops at the look on his face.

#45 - Ugly

"_Rinoa's _beautiful," she says suddenly one morning, "you don't have to keep lying to me."

#46 - War

When they fight, the entire Garden knows about it, and begin taking bets on how long it'll be before Irvine grovels (the last winner was a cadet who said six days because Irvine's libido wouldn't let him hold out any longer).

#47 - Water

She's like a fast river - lively and rushing and completely unstoppable.

#48 - Welcome

Garden is home, even when she wishes it weren't.

#49 - Winter

He doesn't understand what she finds so beautiful about snow, but to her, there's nothing prettier (especially when it's splattered all across his face from the _best_ snowball she's ever thrown).

#50 - Wood

"For luck," she whispers, and hands him the tiny figurine, "because nothing bad has ever happened to me while I've had it," and he wonders if she remembers that he was the one who gave it to her in the first place.  
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(A/N: Okay, those last three absolutely murdered me and then spat me back out. I was doing great until then. These are a lot of fun. Review if you like.)


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